Page 10 of Blood Game

The ‘wall’ had fascinated Kris, filled with newspaper and magazine articles about prominent heads of state, the assassination of a third-world dictator, or the bombing of a remote target in Afghanistan—history in the making.

“I interviewed the son-of-a-bitch!” Cate had pointed out the picture of the cave opening in that remote hideout in the mountains of Afghanistan, the last known hiding place of one of the terrorists in the months after the first Trade Center attack.

“He was educated, articulate, and an absolutely crazy bastard.”

But she had gotten the story, little realizing until years later that she had interviewed one of the most notorious terrorists in history.

Now Kris thought back over the past few years and wondered how many times they had sat across from each other in the main room. Or in the taproom, discussing Cate’s latest book, arguing some plot point that needed to be changed to protect the innocent, and not-so-innocent.

She was going to miss that—the conversations, the stories, the laughter, but most of all she was going to miss Cate; her strength, that go-to-hell attitude that had won her a Pulitzer for her work as a journalist who always looked for the truth.

“Firinn, the Scots call it.” Cate once told her, as she saw the profession of journalism changing.

“God knows it’s in short supply these days.”

She set Robbie down. She rounded the end of the bar and felt along the wall inside the doorway to the taproom for the light switch. She flipped on the lights and stopped just inside the doorway.

“Damn.”

CHAPTER

FOUR

The taproom had been ransacked.

Drawers at the desk had been emptied, papers scattered everywhere. Black-and-white photographs, hundreds of them taken by Cate’s father over his career as a photographer, had been pulled from old library card file drawers that Cate had salvaged, and were strewn across the floor. The laptop computer lay in the corner, the screen broken and skewed at an angle.

The back door of the taproom stood ajar and creaked faintly at a gust of afternoon wind. The latch had been pried away, and the lock with it.

“Damn,” she swore again, then spun around at a faint tapping sound.

It came again, a shadow falling across the taproom window, then again, as the wind stirred a branch of the elm tree outside against the glass. She slowly let out the breath she’d been holding.

She’d been through this before, once in college, returning from classes to find her room ransacked, her computer, CD player, television, and anything else that could be turned for easy cash or drugs, gone.

The usual police report had followed, along with an extra set of locks, but nothing eased that feeling that she’d been violated, that someone had gone through her things, and taken anything of value. She’d cleaned the room from top to bottom, replaced everything with insurance money, but it did little for that feeling of helplessness, that feeling that it didn’t matter how many locks she put on the door, someone would get past them.

She felt a little better after she had moved, but that feeling never completely went away. It was there now, even though it wasn’t her home or apartment that had been broken into—helplessness, then anger.

At the doorway, Rob Roy peered at her curiously, then set about washing his face with cat-nonchalance.

“You go right ahead with what you’re doing,” she told the cat.

Somehow it made the Tavern feel not so empty to hear a voice, even if it was her own.

She picked up the desk phone, momentarily struck by a memory when Cate had it installed.

“No cell coverage! Don’t you love it! I wonder if they come in colors. We had one on the wall when I was growing up—harvest gold.”

The phone was black and looked as if it might have been sitting on a shelf since World War II, but it worked, the tone reassuring as she dialed the number. There was no answer at Anne’s office. She hesitated, then called James Morgan.

He surveyed the damage, picking up a black-and-white photograph, then setting it down.

A Leica camera with several very expensive lenses, that had belonged to Paul Bennett, sat on the shelf behind the desk next to another camera that he had used to take those iconic photographs during World War II.

Both cameras were probably considered collector items, no doubt all the more valuable because of their connection to Bennett. Other photographs, hundreds of them, a record of his career and countless awards over the years, were scattered across the floor.

Who went to all the trouble to break into a place, he thought; ransacked it no doubt in search of money or anything of value that could be quickly turned to buy drugs or black-market video games, then left two extremely valuable cameras—one highly collectible, as well as the flat screen television, computer, and other equipment?